Deathscapes

Repetitions of violence: on David Dungay’s and Fazel Chegeni Nejad’s inquests

Repetitions of violence: on David Dungay’s and Fazel Chegeni Nejad’s inquests

Over the last month, the Deathscapes project, for which both authors work as Chief Investigators, has produced daily dispatches from two successive inquests into racialised deaths in custody. The first of these was into the death in custody of 26-year-old Dunghutti man David Dungay, in Long Bay gaol, held in Sydney from 16-27 July. The second, held in Perth from 30 July-10 August, investigated the death of the Kurdish refugee Fazel Chegeni Nejad, aged 34, held in custody at the North West Point Immigration Detention Centre on Christmas Island.

In this article, written in the days immediately following the inquests, we explore the object lessons offered by the inquests for Mr Dungay and Mr Chegeni Nejad. We detail the routine operations of epistemic violence, and the disjunctions between the process and its violent and troubling effects, that became evident to us on several levels.